The Future of Energy

We all remember seeing those images last year of anti-fracking protestors storming Manchester Magistrates Court protesting the desecration of Britain’s wildlife for the sake of corporate greed. Now thanks to licencing agreements huge parts of Greater Manchester could be awarded to large companies to explore gas and oil.

With the rising cost of fuel, having a car is getting to be more of a burden than a luxury. The average cost of fuel at the moment is 102.58p and there is an uncertainty about whether that price will rise or fall. And the alternate fuel sources at this point just feel like far off fairy tales. But recently in Paris there has been a pretty successful scheme to get electric cars onto the road. Oil and fuel is becoming more controversial as powers are being implemented by the government for fracking in the Lake District.

Blue city programme in the same vein as the Boris Bikes will see electric cars built by Renault coming as a sort of shared programme across the city. The cars will be a fiver for half an hour and if successful in London we could see electric cars driving around the second city pretty soon.

Or if that’s not really your thing then United Utilities have unveiled a new fleet of ‘poo’ fuelled cars. The cars are powered entirely by gases from sewerage from the water treatment plant in Trafford. The biogas car is just one of several energy neutralising ideas from United Utilities being ready to completely change the game when it comes to energy efficiency, Davyhulme wastewater treatment works is United Utilities biggest plant and will be energy neutral by 2018, thanks to the electricity generated on site from the biogas produced by the sludge digestion process.

But as there seems to be a fall in employment in the past few years there is an argument for the fracking to come to the county in order to give the city much needed jobs across the area.

But protests are still progressing into 2016 and in the middle of January this year anti-fracking protestors created a blockade to the entrance of Carrington power station to protest the energy debate. It was part of a national ‘solidarity demonstration’ taking place at the nearby contested fracking site in Upton, Chester. A message in lights hanging six feet up at the blockade reads ‘Flood level 2050?’ in reference to claims that extreme weather will get worse unless the building of new fossil fuel infrastructure is stopped.